A new report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) shows that, despite its reputation, the Balkans has become a low-crime area. According to UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa, who is launching the report today, "The vicious circle of political instability leading to crime, and vice versa, that plagued the Balkans in the 1990s has been broken". It seems to be further welcome news, coming fresh after the study reporting that global terrorism is decreasing, which I blogged last week. See, there are some good news stories out there, even if the usual fare in our line of work is tediously depressing.

But before you get too cheery, the new UNODC report, "Crime and Its Impact on the Balkans", also points to enduring links between business, politics and organised crime that make the region vulnerable to instability.

Going quickly through the three key findings, then, the report notes the region has become safer of late. Rates of homicide, robbery, rape, burglary and assault are lower than in Western Europe. The number of murders is falling everywhere in the Balkans, which for this report includes the countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia. The trend is also noticeable in the richer half of the continent: "Even the number of Balkan nationals being held in Western European prisons has gone down."

Perhaps most surprisingly, organised crime is also going down. The old stereotypes will need to relegated to the history books. Drugs and arms smuggling and human trafficking have all dropped. Still, about 100 tons of heroin pass through the region each year, making it the main route to Western Europe.

The second major point of the report is the prediction that "this progress is likely to continue since the region lacks the usual vulnerabilities that lead to crime elsewhere in the world: mass poverty, income inequality, run-away urbanisation and large-scale youth unemployment". Lower crime rates are also attributable to greater regional stability and democracy as well as an end to war-time profiteering and fuel smuggling during periods of clumsy, untargeted sanctions on Yugoslavia. EU assistance has also been a very positive factor, as has EU membership and the prospect of membership

The third and final point, however, is the difficult one: those links between business, politics and crime. As Costa puts it, "Profiteers of the past are trying to launder their reputations and money through business and politics". The published report sadly doesn't really name names here. I've heard an earlier draft of the text was much more frank.

The prescription from the UNODC is no surprise: governments of the region and their partners, particularly the EU, need to continue strengthening rule of law, integrity in governance and political stability. There need to be greater efforts to fight bribery, counterfeiting, major procurement fraud, money-laundering, embezzlement, duty evasion and abuse of power. Currently, people in the Balkans are still more likely to face demands for bribes than people in other regions of the world.

"Politics and business need to be better insulated from the corrosive influence of crime, especially economic crime", says Costa, whose Office is custodian of the United Nations Convention against Corruption. "Corruption should be treated as public enemy number one in order to strengthen integrity and justice, and increase political legitimacy and investor confidence".

"Open societies, open markets, and open borders are the best way to fight crime in the Balkans."

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